1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to lumbar support garments, and more specifically to a lumber support garments suited for athletic applications.
2. Description of the Prior Art
With the growing popularity of various sports, lumbago has become epidemic among athletes in recent years. Even amateurs who are good enough to play in the finals of various athletic meets by and large suffer from lumbago, as well as professionals.
Such athletes cannot easily cancel their participation in the matches for slight lumbago. Even the people enjoying sports for pleasure seldom quit practicing sports for lumbago. Rather, many desire to keep practicing sports while receiving treatment for lumbago.
Lumbar support garments, such as corsets, are said to function to relieve or prevent lumbago by reducing burdens to back muscles by compressing around the portion from the abdomen to the lumbar area to increase the interabdominal pressure (pressure in the interabdomen), by compressing lumbar muscles to relieve the pain, and by stabilizing the position of the spine with artificial bones to support the lumbar area.
Conventional lumbar support garments on the market, such as corsets, are generally thick, heavy and hard and therefore, are not suitable for athletic applications.
For example, those using rubber sheets such as neoprene for substrates, with the surface covered by cloth can not provide enough ventilation, and thus are not suited for athletic applications which enhance perspiration. Because most of such corsets are too bulky to be securely fitted to a human body by themselves, they are usually applied with a thick auxiliary belt to the outside to be bound firmly.
Besides, their support bones are made of metal or comparatively hard resin such as crystalline polypropylene. Because such bones are too hard to be stitched directly to the main fabric, generally they are inserted into a French seam space to be covered. Due to the covering cloth of the French seam, the support bone portions become bulkier.
The thick garments or those using rubber sheets as substrates, described as the conventional examples, do not provide good ventilation for sweat evaporation. Besides their thickness prevent themselves from drying in case they get wet during marine sports such as boating or yachting. And such garments including those with separate auxiliary belts are on the whole big and bulky and are too heavy for the wearer to play sports. Lumbar support garments using bones made of metal or comparatively hard resin including crystalline polypropylene are not suitable for the sports applications because metal bones are liable to rust, deteriorate, and easily break, and hard resin bones are liable to break during exercises. As conventional lumbar support garments use metal or hard synthetic resin bones which are inserted into a French seam space made of some fabric stitched to the main fabric, the portions of the French seam inserted bones protrude and ruin the comfortableness of the garments. Because such corsets are so thick and bulky, they cause discomfort by impeding the wearer's movements and ruin the contour of the wearer when the wearer wears the corset under sports wear. Thus there is the problem that such corsets cannot be worn without degradation of the contour of the wearer.